Disney Dining credit use for those not on plan

[jonimce]

This will be our 4th time using the dining plan. We have always payed oop for DS's CS meals so they are still bringing in other money. We are actually just switching guests. It's like diciding I don't want to ride missinn space and I give you my fastpass. Is that cheeting the system?


Just courios, how many times have all of used the DDP?

 

[Sammie]

One of the reasons they care is this is a package for guests staying at Disney resorts buying Disney tickets to Disney parks.

If a guest gets the plan and feeds guests that are not staying at Disney and possibly even not going to the park, they are losing out of the total marketing of the plan. By charging rack rate and having the package tied to tickets they are recooping some of the lost revenue from the full price of meals with revenue from other areas. By feeding people not on the plan you eliminiate that potential.

The plan is not just to get people to have meals on Disney it is a total situation where other possible ways to make revenue are involved.

The meal package is very much like an all inclusive resort situation like Sandals. They do not allow their guests on their plan to invite people over from the Marriot and feed them.

The plan is a great deal for those that purchase it. I truly hope that the abuses, whether intentional or accidental, do not cause Disney to drop it. But I will say that if the plan is costing them revenue, or causing them staffing concerns and headaches it very well be taken away.

 

[Sammie]

CMs are rewarded for making guests happy, and punished for upsetting guests. Generally speaking, unless you keep very detailed records of which CM told you what, and then when you find that one gave you bad information pursue punitive action against that CM, there is very little danger to a CM to tell you something that you want to hear. I know sometimes when I overhear conversations between customers and customer service agents, you can tell that this customer will have a very bad reaction to any information contrary to what they want to hear. Human nature is such that many customer service people will rather defer that bad reaction to when some other person has to deal with it. I bet that happens a lot.

Bicker is very right about this. If you ask a CM a question such as ones pertaining to the liberal use of the dining plan, more than likely unless you are talking to an executive in Dining, they are going to tell you what they think you want to hear.

However if you tell them before you ask them the question, I am going to quote you and your response to thousands of others on the Net where they can read it and your supervisor too, I guarantee the anwser will be different.

 

[jonimce]

Sammie, that makes some sence, but the In laws were staying on property and bought park tickets. Do you think I should have just wasted DS's points (Used to be called wishes) ? Would you throw that kind of money away? Because of the way we pay for our Disney vacations, it is very important for us to purchase the plan. And when you purchase the dinning you must do so for everyone in your room or on your reservation. So are you saying I should let Disney make even more money off of me? If a CM came up to you and said Disney would like to treat your family today and sold you 6 park passes for the price of 2, but you only had 4 in your family, would you give the other two back or would you give them to another family?

 

[novdisneydreams]

Don't know if this helps but one of my aunts "treated" some family members who came visiting from Tampa to dinner one night. She used the DDP and had no problems. That was last November, though, so maybe they've changed it. Everyone was an adult. I don't see why Disney would care - the 4 TS meals they paid for were used no matter who ate them

 

[jonimce]

It seams that Disney doesn't have a problem with this. Otherwise they would have come up with a way to prevent it after at least 5 years. Just seams to bother other people.

 

[The Sweetness]

Because Disney could be making profit off of those other people paying for their meals.

I disagree. In June, when my vaca *FINALLY* rolls around, my g/f in Tampa may join us for dinner. Id love for her to join us every night. If she joins us, lets say, twice, I'd be 2 TS short for my last TS, or have 1 TS unused (even better for WDW) The way I see it, I'm paying for the pleasure of DGFs company either way. And its worht every cent, but thats beside the point

 

[JLS]

I was the OP of the infamous "problem at Yachtman Steakhouse" thread. The bottom line is that, apparently, restaurant managers are within their rights under the DDP to restrict a party's use of the plan to only the amount of adults/children in your party (as reflected on your card). If your party is 3 adults, they do not have to let you use 4 adult credits.

My strong sense, after my experience at Yachstman and extensive discussion with the manager there, is that this rule will usually only be enforced when there are children in the party and the manager thinks that you are trying to get extra adult meals using a so-called "child's credit." That was what the Yachtman manager directly accused of doing, and was the reason I became angry. Although he cited the "number of people in the party only" rule, he was fixated on the issue of using a child's credit (we were 3 adults, 1 child, but an extra adult dined with us and that evening my son had already eaten earlier - using "his" credit - and did not order at the restaurant because of a very late reservation), and he made it clear that that was what he was trying to prevent. I firmly believe (obviously cannot prove) that if we had just had a party of 3 adults in our room, but wanted to pay for a 4th adult with credits on the account, we would have been allowed to do that because there would not have been the "child's credit" issue involved.

I agree with the advice - "expect the worst, but hope for the best." The best way to avoid disappointment with the DDP these days is to assume that you may not be able to "treat" others at every restaurant. If you can, great. Be prepared for to have to pay OOP for those meals.

 

[Sammie]

Sammie, that makes some sence, but the In laws were staying on property and bought park tickets. Do you think I should have just wasted DS's points (Used to be called wishes) ? Would you throw that kind of money away? Because of the way we pay for our Disney vacations, it is very important for us to purchase the plan. And when you purchase the dinning you must do so for everyone in your room or on your reservation. So are you saying I should let Disney make even more money off of me? If a CM came up to you and said Disney would like to treat your family today and sold you 6 park passes for the price of 2, but you only had 4 in your family, would you give the other two back or would you give them to another family?

I would give them back. But then that is just me. I do see your point, and this is one area I am not certain what Disney has in mind. I will try to get more info on it though. I think right now their focus is on preventing the use of a child's entitlement to purchase an adult TS meal and since you did not do that, not sure they would have a problem.

 

[bicker]

Sammie, that makes some sence, but the In laws were staying on property and bought park tickets. Do you think I should have just wasted DS's points... ?

No: You should use the child meal entitlements for meals for the children for which the meal entitlements were purchased.

So are you saying I should let Disney make even more money off of me?

This isn't about money. This is about integrity. You purchased meal entitlements at $10.99 per day, intended for children. The Dining Plan says you cannot use child meal entitlements for adults. That's all there is to it.

 

[bicker]

The way I see it ... but thats beside the point

No, that is the point: As you've said, it is how you see it. However, as a customer, you don't get to set the terms and conditions of a contract, in a mass-market commercial transaction. Rather, the supplier always sets the terms and conditions, totally and exclusively, and we customers then have control, but only to accept or reject the offer. We cannot legitimately rationalize changes to the terms and conditions (changes which remarkably always seem to be exclusively in our favor) and impose those changes on the supplier. No mass-market economy could work that way. And unless we want prices to skyrocket, suppliers need to be able to rely on the vast majority of customers to behave with integrity and not take service beyond the terms and conditions of what they've purchased.

 

[jonimce]

bicker, I don't think you have been reading this thread properly or you are confusing me with the others on the other thread. We are talking about using my son's dinning points. He is 19, and when we did this I payed $67.00 a day for his credits. Where did the 10.99 come from? Is that the children's price now? Even the children's price on the silver plan was around $30.00.


Sorry, on our last trip when we did this DS was 17.

 

[bicker]

Yeah, I am confusing threads a bit. Lots of threads. $10.99 is how much the plan costs for children. As you can see, that's a lot more accessible, and without a control mechanism, the system is ripe for, and has been subjected to, a vast amount of exploitation. That's why there is a strong expectation that enforcement of some sort will follow this recent clear outlining of the rules.

Much of what I said still stands, except I need to add: "It would be a shame that folks who weren't planning on exploiting the plan are adversely affected by operational changes made necessary by those who have exploited the plan in the past."

 

[jonimce]

But who's rules? They must be yours. Read the last few entries on the thread about cheating. Someone posted that they just talked to three different people at Disney and this was fine to do. We payed for these credits, so we can give them to other family members. If Disney didn't want us to do this they would have changed the system a long time ago. With today's technogally, and Disney" resorces it would not be very hard to do. We even shared meals in the past, on the silver plan so we could streach it to 3 meals a day. Clearly Disney knew we were doing this because every time you use your card it goes into their coumpeter system.

 

[Sammie]

But who's rules? They must be yours. Read the last few entries on the thread about cheating. Someone posted that they just talked to three different people at Disney and this was fine to do. We payed for these credits, so we can give them to other family members. If Disney didn't want us to do this they would have changed the system a long time ago. With today's technogally, and Disney" resorces it would not be very hard to do. We even shared meals in the past, on the silver plan so we could streach it to 3 meals a day. Clearly Disney knew we were doing this because every time you use your card it goes into their coumpeter system.

As long as you are sharing meals with other adults using Adult entitlements, I don't imagine they do care.

However unless you work for Disney in IT or Dining, I don't see how you can say it's an easy fix. I have several close friends that do work for Disney and they say it is not an easy fix, but they are working on it.

Pedler posted a very lengthy detailed post about all the problems with the tech issues they might be facing in fixing it and even he admitted with his knowledge of computer systems that since he does not work for them and know the exact components of their systems he could not be sure of all the details.

I am not saying your use of the plan is wrong, but if anyone is still saying Disney does not care about the use of child entitlements to purchase adult meals, after they changed the brochure, then the computer issue is simply an excuse and not a reason,

 

[Letsbgoofy]

jonimce,

When you say DS, I think everyone assumes you are talking about a child, not a 17 year old (my DS turned 17 yesterday. I always add his age to the "DS" to avoid confusion). I also read your post and thought you were using your child priced wishes for your in-laws.

I take Bickers last post to mean that he was not talking about you being an exploiter, but someone who might not be able to use your credits for other family members because of exploiters.

I would like to treat my friend from Tampa to dinner one night. We are a party of 2 adults, and I'm afraid that with the new rules we won't be allowed to use our credits for her. Whether people using their "children's entitlements" on adults meals was cheating or not, I think many of us are going to feel the effects of those actions.

 

[jonimce]

OK, I thought I did state very early in the thread that DS is 19 (17 on our last trip). This thread was not about child vs adult meals. It's about using other peoples credits. We will be doing several 2TS meals using DS's credits on our trip next month. He will use some of our CS credits. When we booked our vacation we were told by Disney that we can do this.

We also need to be careful when we say "unimformed CM". (not on this thread but several others) This is our 4th time on the plan and there were changes every time we have used it. The first, you got 2 TS credits a day. Lunch and dinner consisted of app., soup or salad, entree, dessert, bevrage and coffee. Now that was a deal.

Are you telling me that after more than 5 years Disney can't figure out how to seperate points? Then maybe the post about everyones being on their own card is the answer. They do have the finger scan to stop the AP fraud.

 

[novdisneydreams]

When we went and you ate somewhere, you were then given a receipt that stated how many credits you had left. We started out with 28 TS credits for a family of four ( 2 adults, 2 children ) for 7 nights. It didn't really occur to us to use the kids credits for adult portions (I tend to be a "rules follower" and my kids liked the kids meals anyway , but I did notice that they weren't posted differently on the receipt. I don't see why Disney couldn't just change it so the receipt would say 14 ATS and 14 CTS instead of the total 28 TS... and just subtract them as you go like they do anyway. That should not really affect treating a friend at all - you'd just use up one of you ATS credits for your friend ( unless, of course, it was a child )

 

[jonimce]

That sounds like a very simple soluoution to me.

 

[bicker]

But who's rules?

Disney's.

Someone posted that they just talked to three different people at Disney and this was fine to do.

Disney CMs providing incorrect information is nothing new. Beyond the fact that often CMs simply don't know the rules, we guests drive a lot of CMs to tell us what we want to hear, rather than to tell us the truth.

We payed for these credits, so we can give them to other family members.

Credits are non-transferable.

Incidently, this Dining Plan is only two years old. There was no need to worry about separation of credits back before two years ago, when even children were being charged $30 per day. People who pay that much rarely enage in the kind of exploitation that we read about with the Dining Plan today.